A Reading Life, A Writing Life, with Sally Bayley The Body in the Library
This week, Sally is entertaining a visitor to the narrowboat - her eight-year-old neighbour Maeve Magnus - for their regular evening ritual of watching Poirot and honing their impressions of the TV show’s characters. Sally harkens back to her eight-year-old self, reading her way through Agatha Christie’s stories, each tale representing a world of fresh possibilities and alternative ways of living.
She savours one of her favourite passages, the opening of The Body in the Library, with its skilful prose, its evocation of place, time and architecture, its sharp observations of class and money, and its vivid characterisations. This is a novel which influenced Sally in writing her first autobiographical book, Girl With Dove.
Sally reflects on why she wanted to be Miss Marple at the age of eight – and why she still does. She ponders the similarities between the fictional detective and the writer, observing quietly, searching for clues and insights, assessing character and building a narrative.
Agatha Christie (1890 to 1976) is the best-selling novelist of all time. She wrote 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections; she created Miss Marple in 1927 and featured her in 12 novels and 20 stories.
When the Body in Library was published in 1942, Christie wrote in a foreword that she had decided to write a crime novel which would take head-on one of the biggest cliches in all of fiction; a body is found in the library. The novel is acclaimed for its original plotting and its gentle subversion of traditional detective tropes.
Sally also mentions a short story by Virginia Woolf, The Death of a Moth, with its close attention to insect life all around us. The story was published posthumously, in 1942, the year after Woolf’s death:
You can find out more about Girl With Dove, along with her other books, on Sally's website: https://sallybayley.com/books
The producer of the podcast is Andrew Smith: https://www.fleetingyearfilms.com
The extra voice in this episode is Emma Fielding.
Thanks to everyone who has supported us so far. Special thanks go to Violet Henderson, Kris Dyer, and Maeve Magnus.
We have been able to launch and continue to run this podcast thanks to the kind help of donors, to whom we are profoundly grateful; any new listeners who might be willing to support us, please do have a look at the crowd-funding site we have set up - https://gofund.me/d5bef397